


You show me your moves and I'll show you mine

by irisdouglasiana



Category: Agent Carter (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Post-Season/Series 02, Romance, and they all lived happily ever after, dream sequences for everybody!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-02
Updated: 2016-08-13
Packaged: 2018-07-19 16:22:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7368994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irisdouglasiana/pseuds/irisdouglasiana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was just a silly dream and it was months ago, so why is Peggy still so embarrassed? Everyone has strange dreams sometimes. With elaborate musical numbers. Right?</p>
<p>(Now with bonus dream sequences for Jack and Daniel)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. You show me your moves and I'll show you mine

**Author's Note:**

> For an anon who wanted a story about Peggy telling Daniel about her dream in S2E9. Hope this was what you were looking for!

“What song is that?”

Peggy looks up from the file she was reading. “Sorry, what?”

Daniel leans back in his office chair. “You’ve been humming the same song all morning. I’ve never heard it before. What is it?”

Oh. It was _that_ song, from _that_ dream. Why can’t she get that tune out of her head? “Um. Just something I made up.”

He raises an eyebrow. “You’re blushing.”

“I am not!” she denies, though she knows she most certainly is.

“Oh?” Daniel crosses his arms and looks at her expectantly.

The situation is getting desperate. Peggy puts down the file and grabs Daniel’s half empty coffee cup. “Shall I get you a refill?”

She marches off before he can even reply. Down the hall in the breakroom, she takes her time brewing a fresh pot of coffee and adds an extra scoop for him without thinking about it. It was just a silly dream and it was months ago; why is she so embarrassed? Everyone has strange dreams sometimes. With elaborate musical numbers. _Right._

Peggy steps back into Daniel’s office and sets his mug down a bit harder than intended. “Thanks, Peg,” he says. He still has a little smirk on his face as he turns back to his work.

She settles into her chair across from him and is almost ready to believe that’s the last of it—except then Daniel starts whistling the same tune back to her. She puts her pen down. “Oh, really now—”

He grins. “It’s catchy. You sure you won’t tell me what it’s from?”

“Fine,” she snaps. “I had a dream. You were in it.”

“And?”

“And Mr. Jarvis was in it too. And Jason, and my friend Angie. Dottie Underwood was dressed like a waitress. Rose punched me in the face.”

He nods slowly. “Okay…”

She’s really flustered now. “You were dancing and singing, and I can’t get the song out of my head.”

Whatever Daniel was expecting to hear, it clearly wasn’t this. He almost chokes on his coffee. “Me? Dancing and singing, like something out of Broadway? Must’ve been quite the show. I’d say I dance like I have two left feet, except I’d be overstating things.”

Somehow, she can’t quite bring herself to tell him about the way he had strolled towards her and offered her his hand without hesitation. Or how he spun her around and effortlessly lowered her into a dip. Or how he pulled her in close, her face just inches from his. “But you sing?”

Now it’s his turn to be embarrassed. “Maybe.”

“I’d like to hear it,” Peggy says with a smile.

Daniel flushes. “We’ll see.” He suddenly becomes very serious. “I had a dream about you too. You were dressed like a sailor and you were tap dancing on a table.”

She stares at him. “You must be joking.”

“No, no.” He shakes his head. “You were pretty good at it, Peg. Didn’t know you had it in you. You should show me sometime.” Then he starts laughing.

“Why you—” Peggy reaches over and gives him a little shove.

He catches her hand and gives her a smile that takes her breath away. “Well. I think we should make a date of it tonight. You show me your moves and I’ll show you mine.”

A smile spreads across her face. “Deal.”

Sometimes when Daniel’s doing mundane things like filling out paperwork at his desk or taking a phone call, Peggy finds herself just looking at him. Memorizing the slight frown on his face when he’s concentrating; the way he taps his pen against his thigh when he’s worried. She’s caught him watching her too, with such tenderness in his eyes that it makes her heart melt. Her own good fortune continually amazes her. Just last year, she had been sitting two desks behind him in New York, griping about their coworkers and yearning for more. But she never would have imagined this.

In Daniel’s living room later that evening, they turn on the radio and dance. Leaning on each other, her body pressed up against his, taking it step by step. And no, it’s not the way Peggy dreamed it—it’s so much more.


	2. Of dreams and other things

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set in an AU in which Jack passes out after Vernon zaps him with the memory inhibitor in 'The Edge of Mystery.'

_“Can’t let you take them, Vernon.”_

_“Looks like you’ll be getting that promotion—“_

_“Stop! Right there.” Jack flashes his gun._

_Vernon stops. Looks away, then back at Jack. Smiles. “You have no idea how sorry I am to hear that.”_

* * *

Jack blinks and the world comes back into focus. He’s sitting at the counter at a diner, menu in his hands. The waitress looks oddly familiar. “What’ll it be, Chief?” she asks him.

“Pastrami on rye,” he stammers. “Do I know you?”

Her face scrunches up and out of nowhere she breaks down sobbing, and then he recognizes her—the girl from the Griffith, the one who lived next to Carter. _Oh god, not this again_. “Please stop,” he begs.

But she just keeps crying and crying as he sits there awkwardly, until at last it dawns on him that she’s not crying, she’s _laughing_ —at him. He’s been had. He stands up and storms off, and suddenly the diner disappears and he’s standing on a stage instead. Carter and Sousa are on the dance floor below him, Carter in a red dress with her hair tumbling in loose curls down her back, Sousa with his sleeves rolled up and his crutch nowhere in sight. And Sousa is singing, backed by a full orchestra. He’s actually not half bad. As Sousa spins Carter around and drops her into a dip, Jack gets the very odd feeling that he’s in somebody else’s dream. (It has to be Sousa’s, Jack decides—this seems exactly like the sort of thing he would dream about. Carter’s dreams would probably be about punching people.)

They pay no attention to him, and he can’t help but be mesmerized by the way they dance together, lost in their own little world. Sousa had been head over heels for Carter from the beginning, of course. As for Carter, it had been less obvious, but Jack would be blind to not notice the way she gazed at Sousa when he wasn’t looking. Jack leans up against the wall behind the stage to watch, except he doesn’t realize that the wall is flimsy plywood and just part of the backdrop too. The whole thing comes crashing down noisily and Jack falls over with it.

The music cuts off abruptly and Carter and Sousa jump apart. “Jack? What on earth are you doing here?” Carter asks, putting her hands on her hips.

He has no idea. “Sorry, didn’t mean to interrupt,” he says, attempting to sound as bored as possible—not easy to do while lying on the floor on top of a plywood backdrop.

Sousa shoots Jack a glare and plucks his crutch out of…somewhere. He slides his arm through the loop and becomes his regular self again. “Figures,” he mutters. “Vernon got the best of you. Idiot.”

Now Jack’s irritated too. It’s not like he asked to get plopped into somebody else’s dream just so Sousa could call him an idiot. But…“What do you mean, Vernon got the best of me?”

Carter shakes her head and extends her hand to him. He ignores it and gets to his feet on his own. “You need to wake up, Jack.”

“How?”

“Like this,” she says, and delivers a spectacular punch to his jaw.

* * *

The floor is cold and hard and his head is buzzing like mad as he opens his eyes to see Carter and Sousa crouching over him. Carter is shaking his shoulder insistently. She isn’t wearing a red dress, and Sousa sure doesn’t look like he’s about to bust out his swing dancing moves anytime soon.

“Jack?” Carter asks. “What happened? What are you doing here?”

“Uh,” he says as he sits up carefully. “I don’t know.”

“Why are you in the lab?”

“I’m…not sure.” What _had_ he been doing, anyway? How had he ended up on the floor? Jack remains in a fog even as they find the memory inhibitor, explain to him that his brain got zapped, and head back to the office to figure out Vernon’s next move. He listens to Carter and Sousa speaking in low voices in the next room as he loads his gun. The dream is still hovering around the back of his mind—that crying waitress, Carter dancing with Sousa like the rest of the world didn’t exist, Sousa calling him an idiot, and Carter punching him in the face.

Huh. _Carter punching him in the face._ So maybe he had been in _her_ dream, after all…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Loosely inspired by the concept Sholio put forth in 'Without Maps.' That, and by Jack popping up uninvited wherever he goes--even in somebody else's subconscious.


	3. Stick with whiskey next time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set after Daniel's breakup with Violet in "The Atomic Job," and implied subsequent bender.

_“You were running away.”_

_“No, no, I wasn’t.”_

_“You were running away from Peggy.” Violet’s voice is tight and controlled, with only the tears welling up in her eyes giving her away._

_He stares at her. “Okay, Violet, it’s not what you think it is,” he says, but he doesn't even know how to explain what_ it _actually is; the way they had left things in New York—_ another time, all right?

_“Well, I think you’re in love with her. Aren’t you, Daniel?”_

* * *

Daniel opens his eyes to a deserted office. “Peggy?” he calls out tentatively, but nobody answers. He pushes himself to his feet and limps over to the chief’s office. His name is lettered in black on the door. “Anyone there…?”

He’s already starting to regret picking tequila as his post-breakup poison of choice when he opens the door to see Thompson sitting there with his feet up on the desk. He’s examining the framed photograph of Daniel in uniform. “Put that down,” Daniel says, the words coming out sharper than intended. “What are you doing here?”

“Hey, this is _your_ dream, Sousa. You tell me.” Thompson shrugs, setting the picture back on the shelf behind him. (Yes, that last round of tequila was _definitely_ a mistake.)

“You sent Peggy to Los Angeles. You told her I requested her.”

“All right, so I lied.” Thompson smirks. “What are you gonna do about it?”

“I don’t know,” Daniel says.

“Well, what do you want?”

Daniel hesitates. There’s a soft knock on the door and he turns to see Violet, dressed up for their date that never happened. He’s suddenly overwhelmed with guilt. “I’m sorry,” he says, stupidly.

But she just takes his elbow and shakes her head. “I know you’re sorry,” she says. “But you made your choice, and I made mine.”

Thompson and the SSR vanish, and Daniel and Violet stroll down the busy street together arm in arm. Daniel thinks of everything that was good about their relationship and his heart breaks for her. For both of them. “Can you forgive me?”

She pauses in front of the entrance to the restaurant, a slight smile on her lips. “Daniel, I told you I understand. But understanding is not the same as forgiveness.” And then she’s gone.

Alone once more, Daniel opens the door to the restaurant and everybody starts applauding. He looks down and realizes he’s wearing his uniform with all his medals pinned to his chest, the ones that he keeps in a shoebox shoved in the back of a closet at his father’s apartment in New York. That familiar sick, angry feeling wells up in him again. He should be over this by now, shouldn’t he?

But then the lights dim, the spotlights turn to the front of the room, and he sees that they aren’t clapping for him after all—they’re clapping for Peggy, standing on the counter with her hands on her hips and a grin on her face. His jaw drops at the sight of her in a sailor’s uniform. He can’t tear his eyes away from her as a patriotic show tune starts up and she begins to tap dance across the counter, leaping gracefully from table to table. Then the entire restaurant joins in on it, all the women jumping up in unison to dance on the tables and the men taking up the floor around them, jostling Daniel around.

Somehow, he ends up pushed up against the table Peggy is dancing on. He watches as one by one, the women leap down from the tables into their partners’ waiting arms. Peggy catches his eye and gives him a wide smile and he realizes what’s coming. _Oh, Christ_. She _knows_ he can’t catch her; it’s not going to end well for either of them, but then for a split second he remembers her falling onto concrete and rebar, and how he had watched it happen, unable to save her…

Daniel barely has time to brace himself before she launches herself off the table. To his surprise, he actually catches her. But then his leg buckles underneath him and they both go sprawling. It doesn’t hurt at all, oddly enough, and at any rate his attention is entirely taken up by Peggy lying on top of him, her face just inches away from his.

_I think you’re in love with her. Aren’t you, Daniel?_

…god, and there he had stood in front of Violet, staring like an idiot, the answer stuck in his throat. Yes, he loves her; yes, a thousand times over. But it doesn’t mean anything unless she wants him too.

He doesn’t say any of this to Peggy, of course. “Nice outfit,” he blurts instead, unable to help himself.

Peggy looks startled. Then she slides off of him, clears her throat, and helps him to his feet. The other dancers have cleared out, leaving just the two of them. “Stick with whiskey next time, Daniel,” she says. “You look terrible.”

He feels a tap on the shoulder and turns around to see Dottie Underwood wearing nurses’ whites. “Time to wake up, loverboy,” she says, laughing as she punches him in the gut. “I’ll be seeing you real soon.”

* * *

Daniel wakes up to the shrill ringing of the telephone next to his bed, and he resists the urge to throw it against the wall. Between his splitting headache and extremely queasy stomach, he has to concede that dream-Peggy was right—he’s not drinking tequila again, ever. Ever.

It’s Jarvis on the phone. “Yes, Chief Sousa, terribly sorry to bother you so early, but Miss Carter has requested your presence in the lab.”

“Right,” he mutters, and hangs up. The room spins around him as he forces himself out of bed. It feels like Peggy had been tap dancing on top of his head and not on the table—where had _that_ particular image come from, anyway? He continues to contemplate the dream back in the lab, as Peggy sketches out her plan for the night.

“What?” she asks him at one point, looking up from the blueprints of the prison they’re about to break Dottie Underwood out of. ( _This is insane_ , he tells himself. He’s been telling himself this ever since Peggy popped up in Los Angeles not even a week ago.)

He’s still picturing her dressed as a sailor, leaping from table to table. “Nothing,” he says, and despite it all, he can’t help but smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The image of Peggy dressed as a sailor and tap dancing on tables is entirely cribbed from this fantastic sequence from the fantastic Hail, Caesar!: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVQ0JFzXMgY


End file.
